“It was a disaster,” said Dr. Shaun Murphy.

According to Shaun, everything that could have gone wrong during his date with Carly Lever, his coworker, went wrong. 

From flying wine bottles to strained conversations, Shaun was distressed by the night’s events. “I read six joke books, and all I got was a ‘he…hehehe’– it was a disaster,” ranted Shaun to Claire, one of his friends at the hospital. 

After nearly six months, ABC’s “The Good Doctor” returns to the screens of millions with a third season. “The Good Doctor” shows the journey of Dr. Shaun Murphy, an aspiring surgeon, and his years of residency at San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital. Unlike most doctors on medical TV shows, Murphy has autism and savant syndrome. 

While the first and second seasons of the show emphasized on Shaun’s adjustment to his new work environment, it seems that the third season will focus more on Shaun’s personal life. With this new perspective, viewers have the opportunity to experience Shaun’s new journey outside of the operating room.

Shaun is aggravated about his date with Carly throughout the first episode. However, he isn’t the only one whose expectations were let down. Because all of season three’s trailers include a scene of Shaun and Carly dining at a restaurant, we anticipated the date night to be a huge turning point in the show. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single catastrophic incident or event to spice things up. 

The date turned out to be very bland. Shaun thought that his time with Carly could only go one way, so he prepared for it as if there was a “rubric” for dates. He pleaded his roommate for advice and prepared jokes to tell Carly. Instead of having a nice, romantic date, Shaun and Carly’s time together resembled a middle-schoolers’ date. Filled with empty conversations and awkward pauses, there was no connection between the two. Additionally, the date scenes were scattered throughout the episode, ultimately making the date a complete fail and an unclear plot.

The other scenes, which filled in the gaps between Shaun’s date, were even more uneventful. Usually, each episode exhibits at least one moral by showing how Shaun learns to develop social skills through his interactions with his patients. However, during the new episode, every interaction between Shaun and his patients contained no morals. We don’t know what happened during this six-month break, but something happened. Maybe the writers wanted to approach the show with a new style to emphasize the plot. Maybe the show hired a completely new group of writers. Maybe, in fact, the show is losing its touch. Regardless of the reasoning, “The Good Doctor” needs to bring its charm back. Hopefully, all the following episodes won’t replicate the disappointment of the first episode of season three.